Amazon's cloud computing arm is looking to make it easier for customers to use blockchain with a new partnership announced Tuesday.

The cloud computing giant will team with a new start-up launching Tuesday called Kaleido, which was born out of leading blockchain incubator known as Consensys. The company is aiming to give AWS customers an "easy button" to get into the same technology that underpins bitcoin.

"They can focus on their scenario and they don't have to become PhDs is cryptography, we give them a simple platform to build their company on blockchain," said Steve Cerveny, one of the founders of Kaleido.

PLAY VIDEO
Blockchain technology records transactions on a public, distributed ledger, which advocates say gets rid of the need for a third party in many cases. The technology is touted as faster and more secure by advocates.

"Introducing Kaleido to AWS customers is going to help customers move faster and not worry
about managing blockchain themselves," Amazon Web Services said in a statement. It is the first Blockchain SaaS solution available on the AWS Marketplace and will help them rapidly advance their blockchain projects."

Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon that offers a paid subscription for cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments. AWS is using a partner-led strategy instead of building from the ground up.

"They've been looking for partners to help get blockchain into their customers' hands," Cerveny told CNBC. "They're putting it in the marketplace will accelerate what their customers are going to do with it."

The founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform, which is what Kaleido and AWS will be using, said this is the biggest move yet by the tech giant to get into blockchain.

"This is a heavy duty, full stack way of getting the company into blockchain solutions," said Joseph Lubin, founder of Ethereum.

Blockchain can help Amazon in other arms of the ever-expanding business he said, using supply chain as one example. Lubin said Consensys, which oversees more than 50 blockchain projects, has seen a major increase in interest around the technology.

"Three years ago we were getting calls from companies trying to spell blockchain and trying to order one in a color because their boss told them they should get a blockchain," Lubin said. "At this point there are tens of thousands of companies around the world that have real sophistication around this."

Yep. Cuts out all the bullshit so companies can just order a proven and working prebuilt infrastructure to use.

It's exactly what I've been alluding to as hundreds of new blockchains continue to be developed but will ultimately be useless as the vast majority of companies dont want a proprietary solution that's unproven.

Cryptocurrency startup Circle Internet Financial has raised $110 million in venture capital to build out what its founders hope will finally be the internet of value.

Led by Beijing-based Bitcoin hardware provider Bitmain, the round of investment is the largest venture capital round ever raised by a cryptocurrency or blockchain company, eclipsing banking consortium R3, that last year raised a $107 million round.

But what is perhaps of even greater note than the investment itself is how the company is planning to spend that money. Also revealed today, the Boston-based company that had previously raised $136 million is launching the US Dollar Coin, a cryptocurrency that uses the Ethereum supply chain and is intended to be backed by actual US dollar.

To help bring Circle’s vision for a global fiat currencies being run on a blockchain Circle also announced that Bitcoin, which reportedly generated as much as $4 billion in operating profit last year will be joining Centre, an open protocol being created to connect the world’s fiat currencies on a blockchain.

“We’re trying to build the equivalent of Amazon,” said Circle co-founder Sean Neville, in an on-the-record dinner last night. “While we’re also building HTTP,” considered part of the foundation of the Internet.

The building blocks of the seemingly massive endeavor are in the investment itself. Existing investors, IDG Capital, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, Accel, Digital Currency Group, and Pantera, all returned for this round, with new investors Blockchain Capital and Tusk Ventures also joining.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Circle co-founder, chairman, and CEO, Jeremy Allaire said the company value was “approaching” $3 billion, a number a representative of the company separately confirmed.

“It’s one of the biggest and possibly one of the most profitable crypto-companies in the world,” said Allaire. To give an idea of exactly how big Circle is, Allaire said the company now employs 230 people and serves seven million customers.

While the total transaction volume of its existing products, including Circle Invest, Circle Pay, Circle Trade, and the recently acquired cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex, has yet to be revealed, the U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) concept stands to potentially play an even bigger role. If the company can figure out how to monetize it.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain using the ERC20 standard, USDC is falls into the category of cryptocurrencies called stablecoins, designed to resist market fluctuations. The coins, which Allaire said will be categorized as securities will only be “minted” by members of the Centre Foundation, which will in turn be required to not only be licensed financial institutions but will have to hold a one-to-one reserve of actual U.S. dollars.

Is Tron a viable thing now? It used to be ran like a scam coin, are they actually making some kind of progress?

Click to expand...

The hype has definitely died down and the only thing I know about it is that they copied their white paper from other companies and blamed it on a translation error. As far as I know it’s a shit coin, but it should pump before mainnet.

I follow more than 1 facebook crypto group and people are always shilling it when threads like“if you had $1000 to invest in any coin” are made. I have a feeling that it’s shilled because people just do not understand circulating supply and market cap. They just look at the cost of the coin and think it could get to $5-10. Some lady was shilling EOS saying it would hit $1000 by EOY.

That thread was hilarious to read. Half think Vitalik is helping out of the kindness of his heart and the reality checkers point out he’s mocking Larimer. Good stuff.

Click to expand...

You can just tell by the EOS dev responses how out of Vitalik's league they are. Which explains why they're months if not a year+ behind in solving scalablility. Worst of all EOS is branded by many uninformed people as an 'Ethereum killer'...it's pathetic. They're behind in development, lack decentralization, and still run on the Ethereum blockchain ffs- how can they possibly be a replacement?

These exaggerated projects will ultimately fail and attention will dial into the few that are actually viable long term. I know some guys in this thread also like VeChain and Tron but they're more of the same that will inevitably fail.

These exaggerated projects will ultimately fail and attention will dial into the few that are actually viable long term. I know some guys in this thread also like VeChain and Tron but they're more of the same that will inevitably fail.

Click to expand...

I agree with what you’ve said for the most part, but as anyone here knows, I’m heavily invested in VeChain. So much so that after I get home from my business travel I’ll be reallocating some funds from my other coins into VeChain to pick up a strength node. I believe they have a shot at long term viability. Especially with DNV announcing they have purchased a minority stake in the company. When I read that I made up my mind for the strength node. Following the smart money has always been good for me. But to your point, a lot can change when their white paper releases and their code is public.

They’re using POA consensus which doesn’t bother me too much. I prefer a more decentralized network, but having a hybrid for what they’re trying to do isn’t bad either. It was also announced that all Authority Masternodes were enterprise users which makes me feel better.

That said, it’s going to be an interesting month of June and I’m looking forward to it/.